Setup Vagrant with VMWare and Ubuntu

Vagrant is a very handy command-line tool for managing virtual machines (VMs) and orchestrating consistent developer environments across a team of developers.

By default, Vagrant uses Virtualbox VMs. However, it can integrate with other VM providers, as well.

I've been a huge fan of VMWare for more than a decade now. I really like it. It always felt cleaner and snappier than alternatives, to me. At least some industry analysis seem to agree that it may be the fastest VM enclosure available.

Unfortunately, setting up Vagrant with VMWare isn't very straight-forward. Information for various steps is scattered across multiple documentation pages. It took a while for me to piece everything together. In the hopes of saving that time for the next person, I decided to write this blog post.

Preparation.

To use Vagrant with VMWare, it's not sufficient to have VMWare license (which you may already have). You need to also purchase a license for VMWare/Vagrant plugin. At the time of this writing, it costs a hefty $79. Once you purchase the license for the plugin, you get license.lic file. We will be using that file in our installation steps.

Installation

Following is a log of installation steps. It should be pretty self-explanatory. We first

Install vagrant-vmware-fusion plugin, then:

Install the license,

List plugins list to verify successful installation

Download Ubuntu12 vm box for VMware

Create an instance of Ubuntu12/VMware box, with "init".

Launch the newly minted vagrant box with "up".

$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-vmware-fusion
Installing the 'vagrant-vmware-fusion' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-vmware-fusion (2.3.2)'!
$ vagrant plugin license vagrant-vmware-fusion license.lic
Installing license for 'vagrant-vmware-fusion'...
The license for 'vagrant-vmware-fusion' was successfully installed!
$ vagrant plugin list
vagrant-vmware-fusion (2.3.2)
$ vagrant box add vmwareubuntu12 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64_vmware.box
Downloading box from URL: http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64_vmware.box
Extracting box...te: 3485k/s, Estimated time remaining: 0:00:01)
Successfully added box 'vmwareubuntu12' with provider 'vmware_fusion'!
$ vagrant init vmwareubuntu12
A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read
the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on
`vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant.
$ vagrant up --provider=vmware_fusion
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'vmware_fusion' provider...
[default] VMware requires root privileges to make many of the changes
necessary for Vagrant to control it. In a moment, Vagrant will ask for
your administrator password in order to install a helper that will have
permissions to make these changes. Note that Vagrant itself continues
to run without administrative privileges.
Password:
[default] Cloning VMware VM: 'vmwareubuntu12'. This can take some time...
[default] Verifying vmnet devices are healthy...
[default] Preparing network adapters...
[default] Starting the VMware VM...
[default] Waiting for the VM to finish booting...
[default] The machine is booted and ready!
[default] Forwarding ports...
[default] -- 22 => 2222
[default] Configuring network adapters within the VM...
[default] Waiting for HGFS kernel module to load...
[default] Enabling and configuring shared folders...
[default] -- /Users/irakli/vagrants: /vagrant

Once the new Vagrant machine with Ubuntu is successfully up and running, you can ssh into it, by simply typing: